


truth hurts (secrets kill)

by lov_lyness



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Shifting Lines - DovahTobi
Genre: Child Abuse, M/M, Peter Pettigrew is a Good Friend, Stockholm Syndrome, fite me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:35:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25948189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lov_lyness/pseuds/lov_lyness
Summary: One night, Sirius stumbles upon a strange boy. When he realizes that the elusive "Loony Lupin" is being mistreated at home, he decides to do something about it.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 10
Kudos: 17





	1. habromania - noun - the delusion of happiness

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Shifting Lines - Book Two](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23003809) by [DovahTobi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DovahTobi/pseuds/DovahTobi). 



Sirius pulled the cover off the window well and hopped down, wincing as his socked feet hit the gravel and weeds below. Trying to put the cover right as quietly as he could, Sirius barely noticed the oddities of the hole he’d jumped into.

“Hello?”

He spun around, heart beating fast, to see a boy about his age peering at him through iron bars.

“Bloody hell,” Sirius gasped, sitting down hard on what might’ve been a mouse skeleton. “What the fuck, man?”

The boy’s eyes widened in horror. “Arthur!” he cried. “You just sat on Arthur!” Then he added, in a sarcastic tone, “What the fuck, man?”

Sirius half-heartedly looked underneath himself. “Arthur’s dead, mate,” he informed his companion. Trying to sound unconcerned, he added, “What’s with the bars?”

“Oh, they’re mostly for show,” the boy said. “I figured out how to take them off ages ago. Do you want to come in?”

“Er—that’s all right,” Sirius said. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go in a basement with bars on the windows.

“You need shoes,” the boy observed. “And you’re cold.” With a deft flick of his wrist, the window was fully open.The boy reached up through the bars and unhooked them from the outside. “It was harder the first time,” he cheerfully told Sirius. “I had to unscrew it, and Dad put them in pretty tight. But it’s pretty easy now.” He nodded towards Arthur. “It took so long, I was too late. But now I’ve got it.”

“You… broke out of your house to rescue a mouse?” Sirius asked, dumbfounded. “Why did your Dad even put bars  _ on _ your window in the first place?”

“It got broken a few times,” the boy explained. “The bars are to protect the window from rocks.” He walked further from the window. “C’mon, you can have some of my shoes.”

Sirius slipped through the window, his curiosity winning out. The boy pulled on a cord and a single lightbulb clicked on. “What’s your name?” he asked, beginning to rummage through a battered dresser.

“Sirius Black.” There was a beat. “What’s yours?” Sirius asked, when the boy didn’t respond in kind.

“Remus Lupin,” he said, turning around to face Sirius in the light, a pair of Crocs in one hand.

“You mean like—Loony Lupin?” Sirius blurted out.  _ Abort, abort, abort,  _ he thought.  _ Fuck, he’s hot. _

He’d thought the boy was a bit younger than him, but now it was clear that he was not. Even as his shoulder slumped and he ducked his head, revealing a mop of tawny curls, it was obvious that he was several inches taller than Sirius.

“Here’s your shoes,” Remus mumbled, quickly handing Sirius the Crocs. He turned back to the dresser, which had been painted with fantastical curlicues.

“Wait!” Sirius yelped. “I—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m sorry.”

Remus paused, his back to Sirius. “It’s okay.” He went back to rifling through the dresser again. “Do people really call me that?”

“Er, yeah,” Sirius said, tracing his socked toes on the cold concrete floor. Remus’s feet were bare. “...Aren’t you cold?” he asked.

“Oh, no!” Remus said, turning to face Sirius, his face lighting up. “I have my very own radiator,” he explained, pointing at a rusty heater next to an old twin bed.

_ No way he fits in that bed, _ Sirius thought.  _ What the hell? _

“Dad even put in a toilet,” Remus added. He handed Sirius a jumper. “You can use it, if you like. The toilet and the jumper.”

Sirius glanced around the room. The dresser, the bed, the radiator, the window, and behind him—his heart sank horribly—a toilet, its only modicum of privacy the fact that it was on the same wall as the window, so you couldn’t look in and see it. There was a cat flap on the only door. It looked an awful lot like the one Sirius’s mother had attached to the cellar door, to give him water after he’d upset her.  _ Fucking hell, _ Sirius thought. He’d bet ten quid that the Lupins didn’t have a cat.

Slipping on the jumper and the Crocs, Sirius glanced from Remus to the open window.

“Do you want to come with me?’ he asked.

Remus’s eyes widened. “I can’t,” he said, voice tinged with regret. “It’s not safe.” He picked up a slim, red book off of his shabby bed and showed Sirius.  _ Autistic Studies _ was emblazoned on the cover. “I might hurt someone.” His gaze turned thoughtful. “I would like to see the moon, though. Did you know that the person I was named after might’ve been a werewolf?”

“I—I don’t think—”

“Shh,” Remus suddenly hissed, reaching over to tug on the lightbulb’s cord. “Mum’s awake.”

Sirius scrambled back to the window in the dark. “Please, Remus. Come with me. I’ll show you the moon—”

Remus began re-attaching the bars. “It’s okay, Sirius. Are we friends?” Sirius could hear the faint click of locks being disengaged from across the room.

Sirius pushed the window well cover aside and scrambled up the side, accidentally stepping on Arthur again. “Yes,” he said, right before Remus closed the window. “Yeah, we’re friends.”

“Remus? Are you talking to someone?” a woman’s voice asked.

“Just the stars,” Remus replied, his voice muffled. Sirius thought he could hear him smiling.


	2. parapraxis - noun - a slip of the tongue or pen or other error thought to reveal unconscious wishes or attitudes

Two days later, Sirius was outside the Lupins’ house again, this time in a tree across the street. He clutched a pair of binoculars in one hand while gripping the Crocs Remus had lent him in the other.

James had laughed at him when he’d first seen him in the Crocs. Now he was climbing up the tree next to Sirius, fully prepared for some high-stakes stalking.

They watched in silence as James’s parents— _ no, _ Sirius reminded himself _ , our parents _ — walked up the Lupins’ driveway. From their position in the tree, they could see the front door. He tried to peer around into the Lupins’ backyard, but Sirius couldn’t see where Peter should be lurking with his own set of binoculars, in case the Potter’s reconnaissance mission went south.

_ Recon. _ Sirius snorted. Like there was any need to do more recon.

Fleamont—Dad—knocked on the Lupins’ front door, and Sirius focused back on center stage. He could see the back of Fleamont’s salt-and-pepper head and a bit of Euphemia’s face. A middle-aged woman with tawny hair just like Remus’s opened the door, and Sirius sucked in a breath.

“That must be his mum,” he whispered to James. “Remember, she—”

“Almost caught you, right, I remember,” James whispered back. “Oh, damn, Mum’s giving her the Look.”

She was. As Mrs. Lupin talked with the Potters, Sirius could see, squinting through his binoculars, Euphemia’s eyebrows rising higher and higher. After a few moments of Euphemia and Mrs. Lupin making small talk, Fleamont cut in with a quiet sentence.

Mrs. Lupin’s face drained of color, and she began talking quickly. Euphemia interrupted her babble with a casual question, which made Mrs. Lupin plaster a smile on. She stepped away from the door, and the Potters stepped inside.

Sirius scrambled off the tree branch, James in hot pursuit. He almost smashed the binoculars in his hurry to get to the ground, and he thought he saw a neighbor looking at them suspiciously.

Sirius didn’t care. He was racing across the street to crouch under the Lupins’ windows. The blinds were open and one of the windows was cracked open for a breeze. James arrived next to him, panting, and Sirius shushed him, already listening in on the conversation inside.

“I understand you have a son about our sons’ age,” he heard Euphemia say. “There aren’t a lot of boys their age around here. Maybe they could get together sometime. I’m sure Remus being homeschooled wouldn’t interfere with that?”

Sirius bit his lip, trying to hide his grin after hearing Euphemia refer to him as her son.

Mrs. Lupin replied, in a tremorous voice, “W-well, you see, Remus is quite ill. It wouldn’t do to have him be around other children.” Her voice strengthened. “He’s in hospital quite a lot, that’s why he’s not home now—” She cut herself off, and Sirius imagined her nodding firmly.

Fleamont spoke up. “But surely it’s important for him to get the social skills that interaction with kids his own age would give him?” 

“Remus has friends,” Mrs. Lupin protested.

“Where did he get them?” Fleamont asked mildly. “If it doesn’t do to have him around other children?”

“I—”

“I’m good friends with the counsellor up at Hogwarts. Perhaps it would be nice if she and Remus could chat sometimes?”

“It wouldn’t be safe,” Mrs. Lupin said, and for the first time she sounded confident in her words. “With his condition.”

“What does he have?” Euphemia asked.

Mrs. Lupin hesitated. “...Several things. Now, if you’d just like to drop off that plate of cookies here, I’ll grab that flour for you…”

There were several more minutes of pointless small talk, and by the end of it Sirius and James were creeping towards the backyard to collect Peter, disappointed.

“Fuck this,” Sirius said, once they had reconvened in James’s room, where he had first told James, and later Peter, about Remus Lupin. “We’ve got to do something ourselves.”

“But what?” Peter asked.

Sirius narrowed his eyes. “We break him out.”


End file.
